


For anyone, ever burned so bright

by softlyforgotten



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:37:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/pseuds/softlyforgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan likes Brendon, and he likes secrets, and he doesn't want the two to be mutually exclusive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For anyone, ever burned so bright

> And if you're reading this, it's been years  
> since then, and everything's too late  
> the way it always is in songs like this,  
> the way it always is.
> 
> \-- _What Was_ , by Kim Addonizio.

It’s not as if Ryan’s stupid or anything. He generally considers himself to be pretty perceptive about himself (“Self-involved,” Spencer says, grinning); for someone who spends so much time caught up in his own head (“Sulking,” Spencer chirps), he guesses it’s of some importance to be self-analytical at times. The incident in question isn’t exactly a failing on his behalf, really; he just doesn’t understand or even guess what it is for a long time, because it’s when things are right _there_ all the time that Ryan has the most trouble noticing them.

“Sanctuary!” Brendon shrieks, throwing himself through the lounge (knocking over a lamp and Spencer’s favourite coffee mug in the process – wow, he is _dead_ ) and onto the couch. He lands on Ryan heavily, knocking all the breath out of him, and scrambles semi-upright, although apparently unconcerned about sitting in Ryan’s lap. Ryan wheezes at him in an affronted sort of way, and Brendon grins down and pets his hair almost absently. “Sorry,” he says, and then Jon rounds the corner into the room and Brendon yelps again and pushes closer to Ryan, tucking his head over Ryan’s shoulder, fingers digging in hard to Ryan’s sides.

“Prepare to die,” Jon says, solemnly, and Brendon shakes his head wildly.

“Ryan’s safe!” he tells Jon. “You can’t, I’m safe here, it’s neutral territory!”

“If it’s neutral,” Jon says, slowly, “Maybe I will go and sit there too,” and the Ryan looks up properly for the first time and shakes his head sternly, because Brendon is heavy enough, _seriously_. They have tried dogpiles (mostly in the cabin, high and trying to work out the best technique for cuddling) and it doesn’t work. Ryan inevitably gets squashed with a limb sticking out an awkward angle.

Jon gives them both a squinty glare, as if he suspects Ryan of conspiring against him. “You can’t stay there forever, Urie,” he says, darkly, and Brendon says, “Watch me!” and Jon walks out. Brendon laughs quietly and Ryan feels the vibration of it against his skin.

“You’re lying on my book, you know,” Ryan tells him after a minute, and Brendon shrugs. One of his shoulders hits Ryan in the face a little. Ryan doesn’t know why Brendon has to do _every_ thing so exuberantly.

They lie quietly for a while. Brendon waves his foot absently in the air but apart from that he’s mostly still, warm and curled up against Ryan. Once Ryan gets used to his weight it’s even sort of nice, Brendon heavy against him, humming quietly into Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan absently taps out the rhythm to the tune on the small of Brendon’s back, where his t-shirt has ridden up, warm skin.

“Okay,” Brendon says eventually, sitting upright. “So I’m just gonna—”

“Don’t die,” Ryan says, dryly. “I think trying to find another bassist after Jon gets put behind bars for life would prove difficult.”

Brendon puts his hands on his hips, gives Ryan his best diva scowl (he’s been practicing. He thinks they don’t know, but they’ve been taking turns standing outside his door and giggling while he does it) and asks, “And what about _me_? How would you do without your dynamic frontman?”

“Eh, I’m doing okay singing,” Ryan says, and Brendon gasps in horror, stumbling backwards.

“You _wound_ me, Ross,” he says, slipping easily back into the melodrama that heralds an incoming attack on Jon. “I thought we had something special,” but he’s already looking back over his shoulder, warily waiting for a sneak attack.

“Yeah, well,” Ryan says. He pauses and then repeats, “Don’t die,” and Brendon turns and gives him this smile, half-distracted but bright and real all the same, the way only Brendon can smile, and no one’s jumping on Ryan but he feels all the breath go out of him all the same.

It is somewhat of a surprise to realise he’s in love with Brendon Urie.

*

Knowing that he’s in love with Brendon Urie is actually startlingly similar to not knowing that he’s in love with Brendon Urie. Point the first: Brendon doesn’t change, doesn’t suddenly become something beautiful and radiant who attracts light whenever he walks into a room, and he doesn’t stop pissing Ryan off, either. On the other hand, Ryan understands, now, why it is easier to forgive Brendon for such things, and for a while it’s kind of nice to keep this strange, oddly fragile peace clutched to his chest.

When he was a kid he liked secrets more than most people he knew, something to keep to himself and admire at night, the way they were so vulnerable and easily broken. Ryan used to imagine they could light him up; when he met Spencer, he didn’t tell his dad for weeks, not until the first time Spencer’s mom asked if he wanted to come around for a sleepover. Spencer had been something very safe, and all Ryan’s. Ten years later, Ryan had had Brendon’s voice in the same way; now he has just-Brendon.

It is almost disappointing (along with embarrassing) when Spencer finally corners him. Ryan’s in his bunk watching Brick on his laptop, and Spencer shoves at him until he moves in, watches five minutes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting beaten up, and then says, “You’re not nearly as subtle as you’d like.”

“About what?” Ryan asks, carefully, and Spencer looks at him incredulously, rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Ryan,” Spencer says. He pauses for a moment and then says, corner of his mouth twisting up slightly, “You look at him different.”

Ryan swallows hard. “You think,” he says, and then stops, because he can feel the heat creeping up his cheeks and he hates it, he does. Ryan likes Brendon, and he likes secrets, and he doesn’t want the two to be mutually exclusive. “You think he knows?”

“No,” Spencer says, easily. “I don’t think anyone else knows. I just recognise the signs of you with a crush.”

Ryan closes his laptop and rolls half on top of Spencer to put it over the edge of his bunk, before he slips in close to Spencer’s side, closes his eyes. “I think,” he mumbles against Spencer’s ribcage, “that it’s not really a crush.”

Spencer breathes out, and Ryan feels the swell of movement under his cheek. “Yeah,” he says. “I know that, too.”

Ryan closes his eyes. It’s been nice, these past two weeks, but now Spencer knows, and Ryan can’t help but feel a little pathetic, too aware of the distances between things. Immoveable objects, he thinks, old quotes filtering through his head, the distant ache of our proximity, and then he plays with Spencer’s fraying hem so as to avoid talking any longer.

It doesn’t really work. “You should do something about it,” Spencer says. “Maybe. At some point.”

“It’ll ruin the band,” Ryan says, evenly, because it will, because he won’t risk that.

“Maybe,” Spencer says.

“Definitely,” Ryan tells him.

*

Brendon’s sprawled out on the mattress when Ryan sticks his head through the door, his eyes shut. Ryan hesitates for a moment, in case he’s asleep, but Brendon opens his eyes and smiles up at him. “Hey,” he says. “You bring the popcorn?”

“Jon’s got it,” Ryan says. “He’s just talking to Cassie, he’ll be here in a moment. Spence in the shower?”

“Yup,” Brendon says, and then he rolls onto his stomach and beckons Ryan over. Ryan comes willingly enough and Brendon tugs him down next to him, asks, “What are we gonna watch first?”

“I think Jon’s campaigning for 10 Things I Hate About You,” Ryan says, absently, and Brendon grins and croons _I love you baby_ in Ryan’s ear. Ryan hums and then, despite better instincts, slumps closer, tucking himself in close against Brendon. He smells good, clean and like hotel soap and his own aftershave. “You shower?” Ryan mumbles, and Brendon nods, his chin bumping the top of Ryan’s head.

Spencer walks in and Ryan can feel the look he casts at Ryan’s head, but keeps his eyes shut tight against it. Brendon starts talking to Spencer, and then Jon comes in with the movie, and Ryan lies very, very still, feeling Brendon’s hand lying easy on his back, feels it all the way through his shirt to his bones, and Ryan thinks if you cut him open he’ll still have Brendon’s handprints all over.

“Hey,” Brendon murmurs, when Spencer and Jon are having a fierce argument about exactly how badass Heath Ledger is in this movie. “Hey, man, you okay?”

“Fine,” Ryan says, and presses closer, breathes Brendon in.

*

Ryan plays a show with Brendon pressed up close against his side, twisting around to sing in Ryan’s microphone, breathing warm against Ryan’s cheek. If later pressed to answer, Ryan will say that it doesn’t seem to him that Brendon ever stopped moving, full of energy and _on_ the way he gets sometimes, when he feeds off the crowd and throws his head back and fucking _wails_ into the microphone, but at the time he thinks only that Brendon lingers too much, the roll of his hips when he dances surprisingly dirty and too close to Ryan, and Ryan keeps his head ducked and his hands white-knuckled on his guitar in a way he hasn’t for years.

When they come off, laughing and breathless, Spencer says, “Fucking _awesome_ , dude,” and high-fives Brendon, and Jon grabs at him, grinning stupidly, pulling him close in some strange cross between a dudebro hug (as Pete still insists on calling them) and a cuddle, and Ryan understands the appeal. When Brendon gets like this it feels like just touching him can bring a similar state of brilliance, and they all gather close, as if warming their hands to the fire.

Ryan waits for Spencer and Jon to tumble away, slightly, and then he stands next to Brendon, bumping their shoulders together. Brendon bounces on his heels and grins at him and Ryan laughs, reaches up easily and pushes Brendon’s sweaty hair away from his eyes. He doesn’t let his touch linger a moment longer than is necessary; it burns as it is. Ryan thinks about old stories, classical myths, messages at Delphi: _nothing in excess_.

“Good show,” Brendon says, and Ryan turns towards him, not touching, not touching, just smiling, his whole face wide open in agreement. Here is everything, he thinks, here I am and here is everything I have to give, and Brendon punches his shoulder and says, “Dibs first shower.”

*

Shane meets up with them again in Atlanta, and he and Brendon immediately have to go off and have some quality best friend time or something, which probably involves lots of intricate handshakes and subtle eyebrow waggling at each other and then holding hands in the movie theatres or something because, as Brendon has told them all at various times, (1) it psychs people out and you’re the one who _started_ the whole gender thing, Ryan Ross, don’t fucking start on me, (2) Regan thought it was cute that time, and Shane likes it when Regan thinks he’s cute, and (3) holding hands is nice.

Ryan isn’t jealous because there’s nothing to be jealous of. He’s just gotten kind of used to having Brendon to himself, he supposes; on tour it feels more and more like they’re growing into each other, something organic and inevitable and slow, until Ryan feels like he’s only a few hours away from being able to read Brendon’s thoughts, live as comfortably in Brendon’s head as he can in his own. Only someone always manages to steal Brendon away before Ryan could manage, and he’s just…

“You’re a little possessive,” Spencer informs him dryly, when Shane and Brendon wander off.

“I’m not,” Ryan protests, surprised.

“Sorry. I know you’re not. That was unfair.” They pause, and then Spencer says, “You want me to write _Ryan’s first_ on his forehead in sharpie?”

*

Brendon doesn’t get back until late that night. He smells like pot, and he moves like it too, slow and easy, rubbing his hand over his forearm. Brendon always likes being touched, even more so when he’s high, and Ryan’s awake and reading; it’s not a surprise when Brendon makes his way over, falls down easily on the bed next to Ryan.

“You not staying with Shane?” Ryan asks. He’s genuinely curious, Spencer doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he reaches out and curls his fingers around Brendon’s arm anyway, scratching his fingernails just lightly against the inside crook of Brendon’s elbow.

“Nah,” Brendon breathes, slumping back, head next to Ryan’s shoulder. If he was a cat, Ryan thinks, he’d be purring; probably he’s not far off it right now in any case. “He says living with me is bad enough when we’re in separate rooms.”

Ryan laughs, and Brendon turns a pouty, sad expression up to him. “Sorry,” Ryan says. “It’s not like you’re _that_ weird in your sleep.”

“I’m _nice_ ,” Brendon says, and then repeats it twice for emphasis.

“Yeah,” Ryan answers, grinning. “Yeah, the weird snuffly noises are particularly friendly.”

“You’re mean,” Brendon sighs. He’s half-asleep. Ryan picked the comfortable bed on _purpose_ , and Brendon’s going to fall asleep on it, and he’s a dead weight when he’s asleep. Ryan’s life is so unfair.

“Sorry,” Ryan says, even though Brendon’s the one stealing his bed. It’s a sneak attack. Ryan will not put up with it. He elbows Brendon and Brendon hums and rolls over, slightly, enough for Ryan to fit comfortably enough next to him. Ryan regards him suspiciously.

“I’m not that weird,” Brendon says, picking up the old thread of conversation once Ryan’s got the light off and both of them under the blankets. Normal people don’t do this, he thinks a little dizzily, and reaches out for Brendon’s elbow again, fitting himself against Brendon’s back. He strokes his fingers over the bone and Brendon makes that content, humming noise again, eyes slipping closed.

“No,” Ryan agrees, quietly. “Or maybe I’m just used to it.”

Brendon doesn’t reply. Ryan says, forehead tipped to the back of Brendon’s head, “I’ve known you a long while.”

*

You can get used to anything, Ryan tells himself, certainly this, certainly something that isn’t dramatic enough for him to call life-changing, certainly not anything that makes him act differently from day to day, just, just _Brendon_. Ryan thinks, well, sometimes he has a tight feeling in the back of his throat, and sometimes he _wants_ so much he feels like it shows, like it can come crawling out of his skin and his head in technicolour displays of something helpless and unrelenting, but that’s not most of the time. Most of the time, Ryan finds, he just likes being near Brendon, he just likes drifting towards him and thinking, this is enough.

It’s the moments in between them that catch him off-guard; wandering into the kitchenette of the bus one morning to find Brendon making coffee, and Brendon looks up and smiles, clearly still half-asleep. Ryan scratches absently at his hip and thinks _fuck, I am so screwed_ because it’s not even a special smile, not even one of Brendon’s best, and there’s dried toothpaste on the corner of Brendon’s mouth, and still, and still.

“Mornin’,” Brendon says. Ryan echoes him and sits down and thinks, _yeah, yeah, I’m screwed_.

*

The next night, they camp out on the floor of Spencer and Ryan’s hotel room with sleeping bags that Zack’s procured from somewhere, and watch the entire first season of Grey’s Anatomy, because Jon’s trying to find a replacement for The OC and there are ways and means to go about doing it. Then it’s Titanic, which Jon hates but Spencer loves, and Brendon and Ryan grin at each other while Jon bitches about how awful it is the whole way through. Around the time when Rose is trying to find Jack things start to get a bit tense, especially because Brendon has passed out and is snuffling annoyingly in Spencer’s ear, and eventually Spencer shakes Brendon awake and hits Jon across the back of the head, with a final, explosive, “Shut _up_!”

Ryan collapses into laughter while Jon and Brendon stare with huge, mournful eyes at Spencer, who ignores all of them and turns back to the screen. Ryan hides his face in his pillow to muffle his laughter, because he can’t get it to stop now, but Brendon keeps doing heavy, sad sighs and Spencer is most emphatically not looking at any of them, and it’s impossible to stop, Ryan’s stomach hurts. Spencer looks like he’s about to commit murder, though, so Ryan finally manages to pull himself under control.

“This movie does kind of suck,” he stage-whispers to Jon, and ducks Spencer’s automatic flailing hand. He grins and then yawns, shrugs his shoulders a little and rolls onto his side, closes his eyes.

On screen, Jack and Rose are indulging in some desperate kissing. Brendon shuffles closer in his sleeping bag and presses himself up against Ryan’s back, tucks his face in Ryan’s hair.

Ryan lies very, very still, and does not say anything.

*

Later, he wakes with a crick in his neck and a sore arm from where he’s slept on it awkwardly, and Brendon is still curled up behind him, pressing all along Ryan’s back. Ryan’s grateful for the sleeping bag, because he’s half-hard, and Spencer and Jon are only a little way away from them, asleep on the floor, faces lit up by the blue light of the TV screen. Ryan dreamed that he was lying on the ground with his head in Brendon’s lap, and Brendon was pushing Ryan’s hair out of his eyes, fingernails drawing across Ryan’s forehead just lightly enough for it to feel good. It didn’t seem particularly erotic, but Ryan’s starting to think that maybe when it comes to Brendon he’s just easy.

“Ryan?” Brendon says groggily from behind him, and Ryan makes a humming, affirmative noise. Brendon struggles to sit up, and he doesn’t move that far away from Ryan, but it’s enough. Ryan rolls over and looks at him. Brendon’s hair is sticking up in every direction and he’s rubbing his eyes with his fists, a plaintive, childlike gesture. Ryan is kind of sick of this stupid bump-bump-bump in his chest, hard, every time Brendon catches him off guard.

“Fuck, my back hurts,” Brendon says, squinting at the floor in a vaguely hurt manner, as though bewildered and upset as to why it was picking on him. “Let’s not do that again.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryan says, sitting up with a groan. Brendon looks at him out of the corner of his eye and giggles softly, wriggles closer, tucks his face against Ryan’s hair. Their sleeping bags have slipped down and Brendon isn’t wearing a shirt; Ryan can feel warm skin pressed up against him, Brendon’s arm looped loosely around him.

Ryan clears his throat. “I’m hungry,” he says. Brendon makes a sound that is vaguely interested, but mostly – Ryan suspects – just a way of placating him.

Jon rolls over and looks at them, yawning. “Let’s get breakfast,” he says, and then squints at Brendon wrapped around Ryan and adds, thoughtfully, “freaks.”

“Breakfast!” Brendon agrees cheerfully, but he doesn’t let Ryan go.

*

They go on break, is the thing. Ryan goes to his house in California (it’s still, in his head, the New House, even though he bought it years ago, back with Keltie; and sometimes he slips and thinks of Vegas as _home_ ) and Jon goes home to Chicago and Spencer and Brendon go back to Vegas. It’s only ever going to be for a little while, and Ryan likes the peace, the opportunity to get his head clear. Usually he only starts to get lonely after two or three weeks; he’s a solitary kind of person, he thinks. He doesn’t like to think he’s too dependent on anyone.

The first three nights he’s back, he dreams about Brendon.

He’s tried, for the most part, stupid as it sounds, to not think too much about all the extra things he wants from Brendon all of a sudden, the way Brendon half-naked suddenly seems a lot more obvious than it ever had before, Ryan’s eyes drawn back to him unwillingly again and again. Falling in love with his lead singer, Ryan knows, was a pretty stupid thing to do in the first place; entertaining dirty fantasies about him while living practically in each other’s laps is a monumentally moronic one, and Ryan doesn’t pull out alliteration for nothing.

As if rewarding him for good behaviour, though, the moment he’s out of Brendon’s reach, Ryan dreams about Brendon kissing him and fucking him and sucking him off, on his knees with the sweep of his eyelashes dark against his cheeks, pushing Ryan up against a wall, hot and close on Ryan’s bed. Ryan dreams about taking Brendon down to the ocean and letting the waves hold them up, winding his legs around Brendon’s waist, dreams about getting Brendon loose and pliant underneath him and taking his time to finger Brendon open, licking into him, dreams about biting at Brendon’s collarbone and arching up underneath his weight. Every night he wakes up hard and alone and increasingly more desperate, and in the daytime he jumps at shadows, flicks open his phone to call Brendon and then shuts it before he can finish the speed dial, and texts Spencer too much.

On the fifth day, Spencer says, sounding kind of pissed, “You said, you said this wasn’t going to mess anything up—”

“It’s not,” Ryan tells him, firmly. “I’m not letting – I’m not _doing_ anything, Spence.”

“You talk to me all the time,” Spencer says, and Ryan can _hear_ him rolling his eyes. “And it’s always like, oh, this one time Brendon said, this one time Brendon did – and from what I can tell, you’re fucking _ignoring_ him? Seriously, dude, what the fuck?”

Ryan swallows hard. “I’m not ignoring him.”

“You’re not exactly being the most communicative guy in the world, either,” Spencer says. “Wherever the fuck you are in your, in your head, it’s not Brendon’s fault, so it’d be good if you could stop making him think that you’re _pissed_ at him when instead – instead—”

“Yeah,” Ryan says.

“Seriously, Ryan.” Spencer sounds practically exhausted, and Ryan wonders with a guilty start exactly how many worried phone calls he’s been fielding from Brendon, as well as putting up with Ryan’s stuff. “What are you even going to do?”

“Nothing,” Ryan says, quickly, “I promise, Spence, I wouldn’t fuck up the band and this, I’m just going to—”

“I’m not worried about the band,” Spencer says. “I’m worried about you.”

*

Ryan clears out all the furniture of a room in his house and paints it. He doesn’t bother putting sheets on the floor and the paint drops scatter over the floorboards in different colours, as Ryan picks what he likes. He does three walls in a warm, clean yellow, and the fourth in a slightly darker shade, the way it says in interior design books, and then he gets bored with how it looks. He buys a smaller paintbrush and a tin of black paint and he writes on them, slow at first, unsure about his own scrawling, ugly handwriting and the way it looks against the colours, and then gradually gaining courage. He writes all across the walls, vague catalogues of dreams ( _you & me & the sea i could taste the salt on your skin and you laughed the whole time, holding me up so i could shake_) or lines from songs that wander into his head ( _a smile clenched between my two fists/there is no need to be afraid_ ) or quotes from things that he’s reading ( _retain o man in all seasons a temperature of thine own_ ).

Ryan keeps two of his guitars out all the time, one of which he leaves out of tune, and plays on them both. He practices piano, and sings, even going back over the old vocal exercises again and again, remembering Brendon singing them with him, and pushing Ryan upright, _get your posture right, Ross, or it’ll never work_ , and leaving his hand there between Ryan’s shoulder blades, keeping him straight. He buys a cookbook and tries a different recipe every night, until he gets bored and goes back to old favourites and things he can heat up in the microwave.

On the ninth day, he opens the door and Brendon grins at him.

Ryan blinks. Brendon drops his bag and says, cheerfully, “Hi!” and then pulls Ryan into a hug. Ryan’s phone buzzes against his thigh, and Brendon waggles his eyebrows. Ryan stares at him for another long moment and then, as his brain has decided not to work yet, pulls his phone out of his pocket.

 _happy bday_ , Spencer has texted.

Ryan looks up.

“It’s not your birthday for months, I know,” Brendon says, picking up his bag again and pushing past Ryan into the living room. “But Spencer said you were moping for whatever reason, so. Can we go swimming? It’s fucking boiling out there.”

“Did you guys _time coordinate_ this?” Ryan demands, still holding his phone loosely in one hand.

Brendon smiles. “You’re not very welcoming, Ross,” he says. “Hi, Brendon. How was your flight? Thank you for coming all the way out just to pull my tiny little brain out of my ass—”

“My _brain_ out of my ass?” Ryan’s mouth twitches.

Brendon sighs heavily. “Your brain is in your head,” he informs Ryan with a weary air. “I thought the phrasing was implied.”

Ryan pushes his hair out of his eyes and rocks back and forth on his heels, feeling almost shy. “You really want to go swimming?”

Brendon beams.

*

They stay in the water until it’s almost dark. Ryan’s house is pretty awesome in it’s proximity to an almost uninhabited beach, and Brendon tells him so frequently, splashing about and diving deep into the water. It’s been hot, the past few days, and the water feels kind of warm. Ryan floats on his back while Brendon races up and down the beach, freestyle and backstroke and even a flailing attempt at butterfly.

When the day falls into dusk, Brendon floats over towards him and curls a wet hand around Ryan’s forearm, startling him. Ryan was lying on his back; he sinks downwards with a splutter and comes up affronted and gasping for air, while Brendon cackles.

“I hate you,” Ryan informs him, hacking water up out of his lungs (or, okay, the back of his throat, but it’s _gross_ and tastes salty and dry, and Brendon should stop laughing, the stupid fucker).

“You don’t,” Brendon says, easily, and Ryan sighs. Brendon’s still holding onto his arm; when Ryan shakes him loose, Brendon slings it around Ryan’s shoulders instead, and then up, hooking around Ryan’s neck. “You’ve got a fucking nice house,” he tells Ryan again. “Pity it’s so far away.”

“It’s not that far,” Ryan says.

“It’s far enough!” Brendon counters, injured, and tightens his arm around Ryan’s neck, maybe to prove a point, maybe in some weird affectionate Brendon gesture. Whatever the case; Ryan loses his balance and stumbles forward, at the same time he opens his mouth to reply, and in some horrible, romantic comedy turn of events, he finishes with his mouth open and warm on Brendon’s wet cheek, frozen.

Brendon breathes in sharply and then lets Ryan go, and Ryan stumbles backward, eyes wide. He opens his mouth again to brush it off with laughter or some inane comment, but Brendon beats him to it.

“Fuck,” he says. “Spencer said – but I didn’t think—”

“What?” Ryan tries to say it quietly; it comes out in a harsh gulp, almost gasped.

Brendon stares at him, eyes huge. “I wasn’t sure,” he whispers.

“About _what_ , Brendon?” Ryan demands, a little desperate now. “Fucking _what_?”

Brendon leans forward and kisses him, lips sliding awkwardly against Ryan’s. Ryan shudders and feels every inch of his body, too aware of where he’s not touching Brendon, only their faces bumping together, Brendon’s hand awkward on Ryan’s cheek, and for a moment the only thought he has is _yes_ and then _closer_.

He pulls backward, takes a step away and then launches himself floundering and ungraceful into the water, striking out blindly for the beach. It’s still a warm day when he knocks his knees against the sand and can stand up to walk back to his house but he’s shivering all over, goosebumps prickling out over his skin, and he wraps his arms around himself, head ducked down, dripping disconnected dots of water over the sand.

Brendon catches up with him halfway to the dunes. “What are you _doing_?” he asks, out of breath.

“You can’t fucking—”

“What?” Brendon grabs at him until Ryan stops and then shoves hard at his shoulder. “I don’t know what you think I’m doing! Where’d I go wrong? Was I not meant to kiss you, or was I just not meant to kiss you like _that_?”

“Brendon,” Ryan says, helpless.

“Spencer said all this stuff,” Brendon tells him in a furious rush. “About how you’d like – and I thought, last tour, I thought you were different or, but – you never say anything!”

“What did you want me to say?” Ryan asks. He’s tired all of a sudden, sick of Spencer interfering to make something out of nothing, sick of Brendon for being too good to him, sick of this stupid, aimless hunger inside him, all the time, and especially when Brendon was there, dark-eyed and dripping wet and glaring at him. “Hey, Bren, I don’t know if you’re aware but incidentally I fell—” he stumbles over the words a little, but Brendon looks upset, and Ryan doesn’t know what Spencer’s said; he owes him this much, after so long, he owes the truth. He’d thought it would mess the band up, if Brendon knew – now he just thinks, _you’re a fucking coward, Ryan Ross_. “—fell in love with you without noticing, sorry about that.”

Brendon is very still, mouth hanging open a little bit. Ryan looks at the ground, face red, wishing it would open up and swallow him, take him somewhere dark and quiet and far away from here, far away from everywhere.

“No,” Brendon says, eventually, softly, and Ryan closes his eyes. “But you could have told me I didn’t need to wait anymore.”

Ryan looks up, but slowly, so he doesn’t get very much warning before Brendon is on him, mouth hot and hard and arms wrapped around Ryan, pulling him in close, body pressing all up against him, winding around him, everywhere he can. Ryan opens his mouth automatically and Brendon licks inside, and Ryan feels hot and itching and full everywhere he touches, everything in him filled up, Brendon’s leg pushing in between Ryan’s and Brendon’s wet hair falling in Ryan’s face and Brendon’s skin cool but warming under Ryan’s hands. They cling to each other, biting and soothing and tasting, not always with Brendon’s first, bruising force but always there, always firm, and the gulls circle overhead.

They break away eventually, breathing raggedly, and Ryan says, stupidly, “You—”

“I have been waiting,” Brendon tells him, hard and fierce and all Ryan has ever needed, “For a very long time.”


End file.
